Left to right: Fred Dolan, David Dew, Paul Buonopane, Timothy Ferguson, Chester Moses, Andrew Liberatore
WELLESLEY HILLS (December 12, 2016) — MassBay Community College is pleased to announce a student cyber security team has placed 4th at the National Cyber League 2016 Competition. The seven member student team from MassBay, called the Segfault, was ranked 4th out of 144 teams nationwide.
The student team participants include; Paul Buonopane of Medfield, Andrew Liberatore of Franklin, David Dew of Wellesley, Chester Moses of Framingham, Timothy Ferguson of Marlboro, Corey Skinner of Clinton and Fred Dolan of Newton.
The students have been working together since the beginning of the fall 2016 semester and have competed in the preseason, regular season and post season of the National Cyber League competition. The competition is done online on a cloud based environment, where students compete to solve real problems. The MassBay team was given problems to solve that replicate what they might face in the real world if their company was to fall victim of hackers. The team dissected the problems to find solutions, which included downloading files, decryption to view passwords and analyzing information on the attack.
“I am extremely proud of our students who participated in a team at this competition and for the second year they have achieved top 10 placement,” said MassBay Computer Science Professor Shamsi Moussavi. “Students spend time outside the classroom to study, practice, collaborate, help each other, and compete in this competition. They have set a high bar for next year’s team, as well as a guideline for future students to learn from.”
The NCL is a national competition, which students participate as individuals or on teams. This is the second year that MassBay has participated in this competition. The first time in the competition was fall 2015 and that team placed 2nd nationwide.
MassBay Community College announced in September 2016 the addition of the Cyber Security Associate of Science degree program, which is in addition to the popular Cyber Security certificate program. MassBay Community College’s Associate of Science degree in this high demand field is the only Cyber Security program in the Commonwealth that is not designed as a concentration of another field such as computer science. The College is part of a Department of Higher Education funded Cyber Security project that is tasked with establishing transfer pathways for Cyber Security programs with 4-years public institutions in the state.
*Attached is a photo of the team for your consideration. From left to right; Fred Dolan (Newton), David Dew (Wellesley), Paul Buonopane (Medfield), Timothy Ferguson (Marlboro), Chester Moses (Framingham) and Andrew Liberatore (Franklin). Corey Skinner (Clinton) is not pictured.
For more information on MassBay’s Cyber Security Associate Degree and Certificate Programs: MassBay Community Collage Cyber Security Program
For more information on the National Cyber League; http://www.nationalcyberleague.org/index.shtml.